It's April 15: Time to Pay for War, Killing and Oppression Once Again

By Dave Lindorff

As you’re mailing out that tax return again this year, it’s time to
remember once again how much of your hard-earned bucks are being devoted to destruction, imperialist domination, slaughter and
war, to funding ridiculous programs like the failed anti-missile
system, and also to supporting a massively bureaucratic and overstaffed
military.

Even with the current US budget predicted to hit a record $3.5
trillion, thanks to a whopping $800 billion, two-year economic stimulus
package, and with several hundred billion being poured into a group of
banks and the bottomless pit called AIG, the $800 billion budgeted for the military to date
(a figure that includes an $85 billion “supplemental” request for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) represents 22% of total US spending.

That means that more than one in every five of the dollars you are paying to the IRS will be going to the Pentagon.

For a typical family of four with taxable income of $60,000 and a
tax bill of $8201.00, that would mean a “war tax” of $1804.00. For a
wealthier two-income family of four with a taxable income of
$100,000.00, with a tax bill of $17681.00, that would mean a “war tax”
of $3890.00.

Of course, it’s never that simple. Actually, the government’s tax
collections this year, because of the deepening recession which has
been with us since December 2007, means that tax collections will be
way down, not to mention the cuts that were part of the above-mentioned
stimulus package. That is to say, tax revenues this year could be below
$2.4 trillion, meaning the government will have to borrow at least $1
trillion to pay its bills.

At least a fifth of that debt, or $200 billion, will be for war and
general military spending, and it will have to be paid off at interest
rates that mean by the time that debt is retired, it will have cost us
perhaps triple that amount, or $600 billion.

In fiscal 2008, the government spent $408 billion just on interest
on the national debt. At least one quarter of that amount, or $102
billion, was for military-related debt. While this might be a little
low, since our military budgets and military debt are rising year after
year, what that tells us is that we’re also spending perhaps an extra
$40-50 billion a year of our collective tax bill on interest on war
debt. That works out to another 15% of your taxes for war.

So make that $60,000-income family’s war tax $2075.00, while the $100,000-income family’s war tax goes to $4474.00.

The reporting on America’s military budget in the mainstream
corporate media (some of which is actually owned, like NBC, by
conglomerates that are themselves beneficiaries of military spending,
and all of which are beneficiaries of considerable ad revenue from
military contractors and from the Pentagon itself), has been atrocious,
with a lot of talk about “cuts” in pointless hugely expensive weapons
systems like the F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet designed to combat an
advanced enemy that simply doesn’t exist. The truth is that the
proposed 2009 military budget put out by the Obama administration is
the largest in history in actual dollars, continuing the trend of the
last 11 years in which each year’s military budget has been larger than
the prior year’s. It is also the largest military budget, after
adjusting for inflation, since WWII.

If that disgusts you, consider what just 25% of that budget, or
about $175 billion—the amount that House Finance Committee Chair Barney
Frank (D-MA) has proposed cutting—could do, if spent on things this
country needs, instead of on killing and preparing to kill. Total
federal spending on education for 2009: $46 billion. Total spending on
welfare for families with dependent children for 2009: $60 billion.
Total federal spending on unemployment compensation for 2009: $43
billion. Total federal transportation spending in 2009: $84 billion.
Looked at another way, cutting the military budget by 25% (which is
really a modest amount, considering that the US is spending as much on
its military machine as the rest of the entire world combined!), would
allow the government to increase all those other budgets by 50% and
still have $58 billion left over for other useful spending goals like
the environment, energy and medical research, etc.

Just a thought for tax day.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The late folksinger/songwriter Tim Hardin had it right long ago. 

___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net